Nerfgun has an interesting take on game soundtracks:
I had a thought about Sony PSP software the other day while fiddling with the excellent Wipeout Pure. The game features a pretty good soundtrack, as all the Wipeout titles have. Inside the game is the now-ubiquitous feature that allows you to change track shuffle, and remote/add tracks to taste.
Which begs the question: why can't I just listen to the music without playing the actual game?
Surely I have paid for the tracks in the purchase price of the software. All songs are there in full length -
and you can *almost* make a playlist in the Wipeout Settings screen, but the
functionality is just short of useful - i.e., you cannot pause, or search through tracks, and the playback will not
move on to the next track in the list after finishing. So close! Wipeout even offers record label logos and brief song
metadata particular to each track. That must be a Good Thing for the parties involved, from a marketing point of
view.
So I?d love to put this question out there to game devs: why not put in that extra little bit of code for full playlist functionality in every game, especially the games with a stellar raft of licensed music? (Rockstar North, I?m looking in your direction.) This becomes particularly relevant on the PSP, where memory card space is precious - and besides, you *have* the music, compressed and ready to go, on the UMD! Is there some kind of licensing rule which says I must be *playing* a level to hear the track? Could they not advertise this as a feature of the game itself, on the external packaging?
I think it?s an interesting idea, but I don?t think you pay for the soundtrack when you buy the game. My guess is it?s something like the rules for any other title ? if it?s in the game, it belongs to the publisher. Having said that, the PSP is supposed to be a multimedia machine. Why should the music you enjoy in the game be off-limits? If developers can find a secure way to provide the music outside the game, I do think it would be a turn on for a lot of folks. Would they pay more for the feature? If it was a GTA game, yeah, probably.
